Well it doesn't get any more Cowboys and Indians than this now, does it? Rory Calhoun shifts gears only slightly from his Bill Longley persona in 'The Texan' TV series to head up a group of stranded travelers and Cavalry soldiers to take on the Apaches in this quick paced Western. The standard clichéd characters are all here, like a love interest (Barbara Bates) for the hero, an Apache hating Indian (Frank DeKova), and a know it all Army sergeant (Leo Gordon) who knows better than itinerant drifter Logan Cates (Calhoun) how to get out of the fix they're in. Who would you bet on? This is actually pretty entertaining in it's own way. Often the romance angle gets in the way of these stories, but this one's OK, in fact there are two of them. The one involving Lonnie Foreman (Tom Pittman) and Junie Hatchett (Carolyn Craig) is actually kind of sweet if you go in for that sort of stuff. As for Logan, he had some trouble figuring out what his drifting was all about by the end of the picture, so that ride off into the sunset was to be expected.The film had a couple of unexpected pluses if you've watched a lot of Westerns and think you've seen it all. How about soldier Graves getting shot by an Apache fire arrow? That was a first for me, as well as that creepy gila monster staring down Logan in the Apache camp. The picture produced a few minutes of interesting tension with that scene even if it went nowhere, but it was cool enough to mention.The payoff was a clever concoction as well, as Logan had those canteens rigged with gunpowder and pebbles to take out most of the renegades. I thought for sure we'd get a look at the villain Churupati since he was mentioned more than once, but that was not to be. When it was all over, I just had to ask one rhetorical question - what ever happened to the rest of those soldiers?

In a very tightly constructed and entertaining B Western that he produced as well as starred in, Rory Calhoun collects a motley crew of people to stand off hostile Apaches in Apache Territory. The title speaks for itself, but it begs the question as to what all these people were doing there?Circumstance bring Calhoun together with a former flame and her new fiancé, Barbara Bates and John Dehner, a young girl played by Carolyn Craig whom Calhoun rescues on the trail, Tom Pittman an amiable young drifting cowboy, Indian prospector Frank DeKova and a patrol of cavalry who are led by a sergeant from the adjutant general's office with no field experience in Frank DeSales. DeSales gladly cedes leadership to Calhoun who knows far more about Indian fighting than he does.DeSales has some malcontents among his troops, a homesick Myron Healey and a former sergeant in Leo Gordon who thinks he ought to be running things. I think you can see all the inherent conflicts and in the 70 minute running time they're all brought out.Actually Calhoun does have a plan to get them all out and it depends on the weather. The trick is to see how many of them survive. What it is you'll have to see Apache Territory for.If you didn't recognize it, Apache Territory is yet another reworking of John Ford's The Lost Patrol which was remade into Sahara and remade again as Last Of The Comanches. The last stand theme is enduringly popular and Columbia Pictures sure got a lot of use out of it.Two tragedies were in this cast. Both Tom Pittman and Carolyn Craig died way too young and too violently. Pittman in a car crash after this film was completed and Craig several years later by gunshot. In John Mitchum's book Them Ornery Mitchum Boys about he and brother Bob he became friends with Pittman and described him as a nice kid and promising young actor. Pittman was missing for several days before police found the car he had been driving at the bottom of a ravine with Pittman's body. Apache Territory is a good classic B western the kind that sadly Hollywood does not turn out any more.

Sometimes tense B-western stars brawny silent-type Rory Calhoun as a drifter who holds up with an assortment of characters (most reluctant to heed his sage advice) at a waterhole after Apache raids kill a number of their companions. After first rescuing an orphaned young woman (Craig) and wounded young pioneer (Pittman), he's joined by old flame (Bates) and her cowardly fiancé (Dehner), a quartet of Confederate soldiers and a wily gold-prospecting Indian (DeKova) a tribal enemy of the Apaches. As food and water become scarce, tensions within the group cause hysteria and various characters lose their cool leading to fatally poor decisions as cabin fever spreads.Calhoun gets good support from Bates as his scorned former lover, while Myron Healey has a reasonable role as an initially resilient Confederate, who succumbs to panic at the thought of never seeing his family again. Leo Gordon is imposing as the principal agitator among the group, spurred on by greed and selfish motivations to survive at any expense.It's economical and typical of Columbia Pictures westerns at the time, with director Nazarro keeping the melodrama to a minimum and the tension palpable. Apache sympathisers might be offended, with the tribe depicted simply as marauding scalpers, while Craig's nubile wife-to-be would surely irk the feminists as she fusses over domestic duties trying to impress Pittman and clumsily convince him to take her as his wife and mother to his future progeny. But despite the chauvinism, I still found the movie a reasonably taut, formula western worthy of a 70 minute pause while channel surfing.

Rory Calhoun never really made it to "A" star status as a movie actor,but the roles he played in 'B' movies such as Apache Territory suited him well.A handsome and capable actor he made it bearable to watch movies such as this especially when you needed to while away a couple of hours and forget the troubles of the world.This is your basic story of a group of people in the desert surrounded by a horde of Apache indians intent on doing them harm. John Dehner and Leo Gordon -two extremely competent character actors- add to the allure of Apache Territory. The only failure I found was the addition of two goodlooking females to add romantic interest,when the filmmakers could have concentrated more on the interaction between the attacking Indians and the U.S. calvary. The movie tends to drag in the middle stages,due I think to the female cast members ,but finally builds to an entertaining climax. Overall a nice movie to watch when its raining outside and you don't want to mow the lawn.